Starting 28th March 2019, there will be some changes to the contingency and weather deviation procedures on the NAT. ICAO has published a new NAT Ops Bulletin with all the details. Before, there was a lot of confusion around the wording of these two procedures – but ICAO has now made this much clearer, and they […]

If you are operating in the Singapore FIR, consider this carefully: you may be overflying Indonesia without knowing it. Indonesia will know though, and they want you to have an overflight permit. You will find out in one of three ways: You’ll be intercepted by two Indonesian Air Force fighter jets and brought to Indonesia You’ll receive […]

For 10 years SPJC/Lima’s Jorge Chavez airport has been desperately waiting for a promised US$1.5bn expansion. With the rapid growth in the airline industry in Peru over the past few years, it seems the airport authorities are starting to struggle to provide enough capacity, and they are now trying to make it as difficult as […]

All operators, in particular those with an N-reg on the tail, should be aware of the rapidly deepening political and economic crisis in Venezuela. There are shortages of food and many basic goods across the country. Since the start of 2018, there have numerous reports of boats full of starving Venezuelans, many of which left […]

Update Jan 8: Latest in the ongoing debacle at WSSL/Seletar: Malaysia have now agreed to cancel the restricted airspace they imposed to the north of the airport, and in return Singapore will suspend the ILS procedures it had planned to implement. These measures will be in place for one month, starting Jan 8, to give both […]

In Short: The switch from LTBA/Istanbul Ataturk to LTFM/Istanbul New Airport has effectively been postponed until sometime in early March 2019 – although no official date has been given yet. LTFM “officially” opened on 29 Oct 2018, but since then it’s only been available to Turkish Airlines – everyone else has to carry on using LTBA. Istanbul’s […]

Starting 28th March 2019, a new trial will be implemented on the NAT called ASEPS (Advanced Surveillance Enhanced Procedural Separation) using ADS-B in the Shanwick, Gander and Santa Maria FIRs. Compliant aircraft will see a reduction in longitudinal separation to as close as 14 NM. This is not restricted to particular tracks or altitudes, just […]

In Short: Strategic Lateral Offset Procedures (SLOP) costs nothing and increases flight safety. If the airspace permits it, you should be “randomly” offsetting, especially across the North Atlantic. Left is for losers – don’t SLOP left of track. We had a discussion in OpsGroup recently about SLOP (Strategic Lateral Offset Procedures) and it elicited some […]

I can distinctly remember the build up to and roll out of GPS navigations systems. Like so many of us, I was excited to see this new technology integrated into my cockpit. The idea that I would have the capability to accurately determine my position anywhere in the world was exciting! It’s hard to overstate […]

New ICAO requirements on aircraft tracking came into force on Nov 8. Large aircraft (over MTOW 45,500kg and with more than 19 seats) must now track their position every 15 minutes – down from the previously required 60 minutes. The tracking needs to take place in all regions where the local ATS gets position information […]

Dear Reader! First, thanks for being part of this amazing group for the last year. We loved sharing our alerts, risks, dangers, and deviousness with you. It’s been a blast. As we’ve mentioned, we’re now focusing our attention solely on Opsgroup members, so the International Ops Bulletin that you got yesterday was the last one […]

As WSSL/Seletar prepares to open its new $80 million terminal on Nov 19, the authorities have announced that WSSL is now a “schedules facilitated” airport. Don’t panic – at least, not yet. This basically just means that because demand is now getting close to the airport’s capacity, all airline and charter flights must confirm their […]

The 2018 G20 Leaders meeting will be held in Buenos Aires on November 30 and December 1, 2018. GA/BA flights will be prohibited from operating to both SAEZ/Ministro Pistarini and SABE/Jorge Newbery – but also all the smaller airport across the city as well. AIP SUP A28/2018 goes into all of the restrictions in detail, but here are the […]

I love how the hive-mind works. We have 5000 members, and so it shouldn’t be surprising, but it’s still awesome to see it in action. Yesterday, in slack, a member asked: Now, I’ve never heard of Novolazarevskaya Station, but that’s not important. There are another 4,999 of us, and chances are that someone in the group […]

Just a short update on a few things happening in Canada that you might have missed… Nationwide There has been a change in the Maximum Indicated Airspeeds for holding patterns to bring them more in line with the rest of the world. This came into effect on 11OCT18 and will be reflected in the 08NOV18 […]

The US reimposed sanctions against Iran on Nov 5. Despite this, so far there has been no change to the FAA guidance to US operators issued on 9th September 2018: flights to Iran are not prohibited, but operators should “exercise caution” when flying in Iranian airspace. However, with the reimposed sanctions comes a new problem if […]